History at primary level helps children to gain knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It involves understanding the process of change, the complexity of people’s lives, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and society today. History allows children to develop the following key skills: ask perceptive questions, think critically, evaluate evidence and examine arguments. Our history curriculum allows children to develop their cultural capital. Purposeful and natural links to British values and discussions around being good UK and global citizens are threaded through the curriculum. Our history curriculum promotes the rich diversity of the world, Britain and an appreciation of our locality.

INTENT

The intent of History across our school is to ensure that our pupils have a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. We want our learners to develop a deep sense of life-long historical knowledge enabled by skills that they use for the rest of their lives. We encourage children to develop a context for their growing sense of identity and a chronological framework for their knowledge of significant events and people. We encourage children to use a high-level of historical vocabulary relevant to the topic that they are studying and to have a concrete understanding of key historical terms. In our history lessons, we aim to combine substantive and disciplinary knowledge so that our pupils can remember key dates, people and features of history whilst developing the skills of historians to understand changes, continuation, causes and sources from the past. We believe that what our pupils learn through history can influence their decisions about personal choices, attitudes and values. Our intent, when teaching history, is to stimulate the children’s curiosity in order for them to develop their knowledge, skills and understanding.

IMPLEMENTATION

EYFS

The Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum supports children’s understanding of History through the planning and teaching of ‘Understanding the World’. This aspect is about how children find out about past and present events in their own lives, their families and other people they know. Children are encouraged to develop a sense of change over time and are given opportunities to differentiate between past and present by observing routines throughout the day, growing plants, observing the passing of seasons and time and looking at photographs of their life and of others. Practitioners encourage investigative behaviour and raise questions such as, ‘What do you think?', ‘Tell me more about?', 'What will happen if…?', ‘What else could we try?', ‘What could it be used for?' and ‘How might it work?' Use of language relating to time is used in daily routines and conversations with children for example, ‘yesterday', ‘old', ‘past', ‘now' and ‘then'.

KEY STAGE 1 AND 2

In Key stage 1 and 2 work is planned and taught as a two year rolling programme. History is taught through fun and engaging topics linked directly to the National Curriculum.

• Topics are blocked to allow children to focus on developing their knowledge and skills, studying each topic in depth.
• In KS1, History begins by looking at the children’s own personal history and introduces them to the idea of chronology and timelines.
• In KS1, History will look at significant events and people who have shaped society, locally, nationally and globally.
• In KS2, each class studies aspects of local history, a British history topic and an ancient history topic.
• In KS2, UK history is taught chronologically to allow children to confidently place each time period. This allows pupils to consistently build on previous knowledge and learning by placing previously taught History topics on a timeline.
• In order to support children in their ability to know more and remember more, there are regular opportunities to review the learning that has taken place in previous topics as well as previous lessons.
• At the start of each topic children will review previous learning and will have the opportunity to share what they already know about a current topic.
• In KS2 Children are given a knowledge organiser at the start of each topic which details some key information, dates and vocabulary. This is used to support children with their acquisition of knowledge and is used as a reference document.
• To support teaching, staff access a range of resources and planning including History Association, Plan Bee, and KS2 History
• Medium term planning for all units will cover key historical concepts: Chronological understanding, Historical knowledge, Historical interpretation, Historical enquiry and organisation and communication.
• Children are given opportunities, where possible, to study artefacts leading to enquiry, investigation, analysis, interpretation, evaluation and presentation.
• We plan for effective use of educational visits and visitors, to enrich and enhance the pupil’s learning experience and the History curriculum.
• Teachers use highly effective Assessment for Learning at different points in each lesson to ensure misconceptions are highlighted and addressed.
• Through using a range of assessment tools, differentiation is facilitated by teachers, to ensure that each pupil can access the History curriculum.
• Cross-curricular links are planned for, with other subjects such as Geography, Writing, Music and Computing.
• Educational, immersive displays that answer key questions help to create a rich learning environment for each History focus. They incorporate examples of work and new words which help develop vocabulary skills and support the development of a language-rich environment. 

IMPACT

Assessment for learning takes place during every lesson to assess understanding. At the beginning of each unit of work, prior knowledge is assessed and any gaps in knowledge are explicitly taught. Pupils will be encouraged to reflect upon their work as individuals, in class groups and through self-assessment as appropriate. Teachers will use formative assessment strategies as well as effective questioning during lessons to check pupils’ understanding of the content and support them to explain how this builds on what they have learnt before.

At the end of each year teachers will make summative assessments of the attainment and progress made by pupils against the National curriculum and use these to report to parents/carers.

.SEND:

We are ambitious about what our children with SEN can achieve, we take into consideration their barriers to learning and we don't let these limit their opportunities.

In order to support our pupils with SEN, we:

• Have classroom displays / working walls that are used as visual prompts; they include facts, time lines, images, key vocabulary and child friendly definitions. We refer to these regularly and encourage children with SEN to use these if they are unsure in lessons
• get our children to work in mixed ability groups with teacher/TA overseeing groups and offering assistance when required
• begin each lesson with a recap of facts and key vocabulary from prior sessions- this will give children with SEN more time and opportunities to understand the concepts and vital knowledge they need to access the learning.